Review: Out of Bounds (Boundaries #1) by A.R. Barley

Blurb:When the weather outside starts cooling down, inside the dorm things are heating up. Can these college roommates fall in love without going out of bounds?

Beaten and heartbroken, Jesse Cole is placed in a new dorm room after his last roommate attacked him. Just wanting to be left alone to heal in peace, he’s shocked when tall, dark and dangerous-looking Nick Moretti walks in.

Nick doesn’t have time to tiptoe around his new roommate—he’s too busy working in order to pay for school. But something about Jesse brings out his protective instincts. As their cautious friendship grows and becomes loaded with sexual tension, he wants to make Jesse comfortable.

Enter the perfect plan: a line of tape down the center of the room. Boundaries established.

But as innocent movie nights become hours-long temptation marathons, and whispered chats from across the room delve into straight-up dirty territory, crossing the line has never been so satisfying.

Musings:
Jesse is a college sophomore, found out on campus at night, after being beaten up by his roommate. He’s put in a room with Nick who, at first, I thought was going to make things worse. Turns out I was wrong. Nick, the rough, tough, ‘I got a reputation to uphold’ dude is in his own way the sweetest, most helpful guy. But really only to Jesse.

Jesse’s jumpy around Nick, with good reason, so Nick comes up with the idea of marking a line down the middle of the room. Going over the line into the other person’s space is prohibited, allowing Jesse to relax and form a friendship with Nick. What came next was a balance of plot, caring, and swooniness.

The pacing is just what I expected from someone who’d just gotten betrayed by a friend, not “let me jump right in with my next roommate”, but not glacial either. We get to see the trust building, even when all they can think about is going out of bounds. *see what I did there? I usually like spotting the title in the book. Don’t judge, it’s a quirk and makes me happy. However, this time it was repeated a little too often and I wouldn’t have minded that being toned down a little.*

I was a little upset at the end, SPOILER: during the confrontation. I was expecting a little more, a punishment, stern talking to or something, but overall, the book did its job.

AR Barley is new to m/m but that doesn’t mean a damn thing.

** Note:
There’s already titles listed for the next 2 books in the series.